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442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel

2018-03-25T10:01:33Z

TwoFx:

{{comic
| number = 442
| date = June 27, 2008
| title = xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel
| image = xkcd_loves_the_discovery_channel.png
| titletext = I love the title-text!
}}
==Explanation==
This comic is a parody of the {{w|Discovery Channel}} commercial showing various clips of people singing a song with the chorus line [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_f98qOGY0 'Boom De Yada']. The comic is divided into a grid of 4 by 6 panels, most depicting a character or situation from a previous xkcd strip. In each panel is written a part of a song similar to the song from the Discovery Channel commercial.

The campaign from the {{w|Discovery Channel}} was not called "Boom De Yada", but "{{w|I Love the World}}". The title "xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel" is in reference to this.

Most of the panels are references to previous xkcd strips, but a few are not.

;Panel 1 ''I love momentum.''
:A reference to comic [[162: Angular Momentum]], where [[Megan]] spins in a circle to "rob the planet of angular momentum."
;Panel 2 ''I love to engineer.''
:A reference to comic [[413: New Pet]], where Megan and [[Cueball]] turn an {{w|EEE PC}} into a household pet.
;Panel 3 ''I love this bakery!''
:A reference to comic [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport]], where [[Beret Guy]] shows his liking for bakeries in first panel. His love of bakeries is a recurring gag in the comic.
;Panel 4 ''I love the blogosphere!''
:A reference to comic [[239: Blagofaire]], where someone from the far future believes many people blogged from high-altitude balloons whilst wearing red capes and goggles. The flying character may be {{w|Cory Doctorow}}, who is mentioned in the comic as the only blogger to actually do this, and who also appeared in comic [[345: 1337: Part 5]] in this guise.
;Panel 5 ''I love the whole world.'' (Cueball running in large hamster ball.)
:Likely a reference to comic [[152: Hamster Ball]], though there are [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Hamster_Ball multiple comics] featuring human-sized {{w|Hamster ball|hamster balls}}.
;Panel 6 ''And all its messed-up folks.''
:A reference to the /b/ ("Random") forum on {{w|4chan}}, which is in fact home to plenty of "messed-up folks". This on-line behavior is something [[Randall]] comments on in several comics both before and after this. For instance in [[202: YouTube]].
;Panel 7 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Cueball and Megan immersed in playpen balls.)
:A reference to comic [[150: Grownups]], where Megan decides that she has the ability to, and wants to, turn her house into a giant ball pit.
;Panel 8 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (''I put on my robe and wizard hat'')
:A reference to [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/bloodninja this roleplay chat transcript] (NSFW), which became an Internet meme. A user named bloodninja would roleplay as a wizard during {{w|cybersex}} (saying "I put on my robe and wizard hat" to signal this) and invariably infuriate his unwitting partners with demeaning actions. Other incidents involved him roleplaying as a rhinoceros. In the above mentioned comic [[150: Grownups]] the two characters also disappear, but in that case a big pink heart comes out of the playpen balls.
;Panel 9 ''I love your suffering.''
:The recurring character [[Black Hat]] is being his usual self and causing suffering for his own amusement, as in comic [[72: Classhole]]. In this panel he is seen giving the child a package containing a bobcat, like the package in comic [[325: A-Minus-Minus]]. This would explain the lines indicating the box to be moving in Black Hat's hands.
;Panel 10 ''I love cryptography.''
:{{w|Cryptography}} is a subject that comes up often in the comic, notably, in comics [[153: Cryptography]] and [[177: Alice and Bob]] before this one (for a full list see [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Cryptography Category:Cryptography]). The panel shows a flowchart of the kind commonly used to show how a particular cryptosystem works and/or how it can be broken.
;Panel 11 ''I love entangled sheets.''
:Sexual reference. Sex and red sheets are also brought up in comic [[230: Hamiltonian]].
;Panel 12 ''And kite photography.''
:A reference to Randall's own hobby of [http://xkcd.com/kite/ kite photography] as well as comic [[235: Kite]].
;Panel 13 ''I love the whole world'' (Map of the internet.)
:A reference to comic [[256: Online Communities]], featuring online communities of the time visualised as a world map, with geographic area representing their approximate membership size. There is, more directly, a pun on "internet", namely "outernet".
;Panel 14 ''And all its mysteries.''
:A reference to a series of comics on "red spiders:" [[8|8: Red Spiders]], [[43|43: Red Spiders 2]], [[47|47: Counter-Red Spiders]], [[126|126: Red Spiders Cometh]], and [[427|427: Bad Timing]].
;Panel 15 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Two people sword-fighting on rolling office chairs.)
:A reference to comic [[303: Compiling]], where two coders battle with fake swords at work, with the excuse that their code is compiling.
;Panel 16 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Classroom with two students and a teacher.)
:Nothing too special, but it does embrace the "everybody joins in" theme behind the commercials. The teacher is [[Miss Lenhart]] who was first properly introduced in comic [[263: Certainty]] but may have made an appearance in comic [[59: Graduation]].
;Panel 17 ''I love elections'' (''Barack me Obamadeus!'')
:A pun on the song {{w|Rock Me Amadeus}} and US president {{w|Barack Obama}}. At this point Randall had not done any comics directly on elections but he made this after the one in 2008: [[500: Election]] and has shown his love for this subject also around the 2012 election.
;Panel 18 ''I love transistors.''
:This panel has Cueball's crotch replaced with the (similar-looking) icon used for a {{w|transistor}} in a {{w|circuit diagram}}. Randall later showed how much he loves anything that can go in to such a diagram in [[730: Circuit Diagram]].
;Panel 19 ''I love weird pillow talk.'' (''There ''must'' be Taft slash fiction.'')
:"[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pillow+talk Pillow talk]" means intimate conversations between lovers, "{{w|slash fiction}}" is fanfiction with characters of the same sex, and "Taft" is {{w|William Howard Taft}}, a US President mostly remembered for his severe obesity. It appears they are invoking {{w|Rule 34 (Internet meme)|rule 34 of the Internet}} as a reference to [[305: Rule 34]]. Weird pillow talk is also the subject of comic [[69: Pillow Talk]], while the Taft reference comes from comic [[214: The Problem with Wikipedia]].
;Panel 20 ''I love your sister.''
:A reference to xkcd's recurring joke of dating the female character's sister, which spans several comics including [[49: Want]], [[279: Pickup Lines]], [[317: That Lovin' Feelin']], and [[408: Overqualified]].
;Panel 21 ''I love the whole world'' (Roller coaster with Cueball holding chess board)
:A reference to comic [[249: Chess Photo]] which inspired an internet meme.
;Panel 22 ''The future's pretty cool!'' (Beret Guy in a forest.)
:The picture of the forest is similar to that in [[269: TCMP]], though it may also be a reference to comic [[167: Nihilism]], where Cueball and Beret Guy make observations about the future while climbing a tree. Later, in comic [[1322: Winter]], the two are seen walking through a forest very similar to the one shown here.
;Panel 23 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Megan doing the MC Hammer slide towards Cueball.)
:A reference to comic [[108: M.C. Hammer Slide]], where Hairy falls in love with "a girl whose only mode of transportation is the M.C. Hammer Slide."
;Panel 24 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Cueball and Megan on an electric skateboard.)
:A reference to comic [[409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)]], where Megan and Cueball go on an electric skateboard ride, but he already introduced these back in [[139: I Have Owned Two Electric Skateboards]].

The title text continues the song, self-referentially. Self-reference is a reoccurring theme in {{w|Douglas Hofstadter|Douglas Hofstadter's}} books, notably ''{{w|Gödel, Escher, Bach}}'' which Randall reefers to directly in [[24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey]]. Later Hofstadter has been referenced in other comics, such as in the title text of [[555: Two Mirrors]] and [[608: Form]] plus of course in [[917: Hofstadter]]. Self-reference as a form of humor was also [[:Category:Self-reference|explored before]], but most famously in the later [[688: Self-Description]].

==Transcript==
:[The comic is in parody of the Discovery Channel commercial showing various clips of people singing a song with the chorus line "Boom De Yada."]
:[The comic is divided into a grid of 4 by 6 panels, each depicting a character or situation often from a previous xkcd strip.]
:[In each panel is written a part of a song similar to the song from the Discovery Channel commercial.]

:Panel 1:
:[Megan spinning around.]
:I love momentum.

:Panel 2:
:[Megan laying on floor tinkering with EEE PC hamster ball robot.]
:I love to engineer.

:Panel 3:
:[Beret Guy standing in bakery holding a loaf of bread in each hand, sign with "PIE!" in background.]
:I love this bakery!

:Panel 4:
:[Cory Doctorow in goggles and red cape flying superman-style.]
:I love the blogosphere!

:Panel 5:
:[Cueball running in large hamster ball.]
:I love the whole world

:Panel 6:
:[Depiction of internet sludge (4chan b-Random)]
:And all its messed-up folks.

:Panel 7:
:[Cueball and Megan immersed in playpen balls.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 8:
:[Mass of playpen balls with speech "I put on my robe and wizard hat" originating from it.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 9:
:[Black Hat giving a moving and shaking gift to a kid with party hat.]
:I love your suffering.

:Panel 10:
:[Diagram showing RSA fingerprint authentication between two people.]
:I love cryptography.

:Panel 11:
:[Cueball and Megan in bed covered by red sheet.]
:I love entangled sheets.

:Panel 12:
:[Cueball hanging from kite string holding camera.]
:And kite photography.

:Panel 13:
:[Map of the internet.]
:I love the whole world

:Panel 14:
:[Cube with red spider on top.]
:And all its mysteries.

:Panel 15:
:[Two people sword-fighting on rolling office chairs.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 16:
:[Classroom with two students and Mrs. Lenhart.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 17:
:[Cueball saying "Barack me Obamadeus!" to another man speaking energetically at a podium.]
:I love elections.

:Panel 18:
:[Cueball holding schematic diagram of a transistor in front of his crotch.]
:I love transistors.

:Panel 19:
:[Cueball and Megan in bed, Cueball saying "There ''must'' be taft slash fiction."]
:I love weird pillow talk.

:Panel 20:
:[Cueball speaking to Megan.]
:I love your sister.

:Panel 21:
:[Roller coaster with Cueball in front car holding chess board and thinking about a move.]
:I love the whole world.

:Panel 22:
:[Beret Guy standing in the midst of leafless trees.]
:The future's pretty cool!

:Panel 23:
:[Megan doing the MC Hammer slide towards Cueball.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 24:
:[Cueball and Megan on an electric skateboard.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

==Trivia==
* This comic was enacted by Olga Nunes and various famous people as [http://www.olganunes.com/xkcd ''We Love xkcd''].
* Noam Raby and Olga Nunes also produced an animation based upon this comic, named [https://vimeo.com/7151435 ''I Love xkcd''].

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Playpen balls]]
[[Category:Red Spiders]]
[[Category:Songs]]
[[Category:Electric skateboard]]
[[Category:Cryptography]]
[[Category:Hamster Ball]]
[[Category:Self-reference]]
[[Category:Kites]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Your sister]]

1961: Interaction

2018-03-02T07:51:28Z

TwoFx: Mention social interaction comic 1917

{{comic
| number = 1961
| date = February 28, 2018
| title = Interaction
| image = interaction.png
| titletext = [They do not move.]
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete| Needs to be expanded with regards to social anxiety. There are now several links to comics dealing with similar issues of having problems with normal social interactions. Should there instead be a category (please add more similar comics to the list to see if it makes sense.) If you have an idea for what the title of such category should be, perhaps add it here (and in the discussion). "Small talk" or "Social interactions" could be possible, but seems not quite adequate?}}

[[Cueball]] and [[White Hat]] are making small talk. White Hat begins the conversation with a typical greeting, asking, "How are you doing?" Normally this is a habitualized greeting pattern, where the person being greeted would respond with a genetic positive like, "Good," "Okay," "Can't complain," etc. But instead, Cueball answers with a very open and honest statement about the {{w|social anxiety}} he thinks he is successfully dealing with. White Hat then admits that he is experiencing the same thing, and the two congratulate each other for having a "normal" conversation with another human. After that, there is an awkward silence where neither knows what to talk about next. Finally, White Hat makes note of the awkwardness and Cueball suggests they stop before it gets worse.

The scene is ironic because their dialogue mirrors the common pattern of typical minor daily interactions, but also differs greatly from anything "normal." White Hat & Cuteball are being far from normal here mostly because their dialogue is inappropriately open & honest.

So basically they have not managed to behave like regular human beings, and thus have nothing to congratulate each other for. Except for White Hat's opening line nothing in the conversation has in any way resembled normal behavior due to their serious issues with small talking/interacting with other people, even this simple '''interaction''' fails completely, hence the title of the comic.

The title text states, that after saying goodbye they don't move away, keeping up the uncomfortable silence, continuing to display their problems. Neither of them wish to be the first to turn away, or one or both are locked in the situation and has no clue how to finish it, even though they are both obviously aware of their problems and what makes them anxious.

The title text may be a reference to the final stage direction "''They do not move.''" in Samuel Beckett's play {{w|Waiting for Godot}}, where the protagonists frequently discuss leaving, but do not move.

[[Randall]] has previously made several comics with a similar theme showing Cueball's (or his Randall's own) problems with several social situations/interactions/small talk, especially this comic [[222: Small Talk]]. There are several more examples in this list, (please feel free to add more here):
*[[1324: Weather]]
*[[1640: Super Bowl Context]]
*[[1643: Degrees]]
*[[1650: Baby]]
*[[1917: How to Make Friends]]

It was more than two yeas ago he made the last of those type of comics. It seems that Randall this month returned to his [[1960:_Code_Golf#Revitalizing_old_themes|old themes]].

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Cueball have just met and begins an interaction.]
:White Hat: How are you doing?
:Cueball: Really excited to be confidently handling this extremely basic social interaction!

:[White Hat holds is arms slightly out.]
:White Hat: Same here!
:Cueball: Hey, congrats!
:White Hat: You too!
:Cueball: Thanks!

:[In a frame-less beat panel, they just stand still.]

:[Same setting as in the first panel.]
:White Hat: And now it's falling apart before my eyes.
:Cueball: I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead.
:White Hat: Same.
:Cueball: See you later!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

1917: How to Make Friends

2018-03-02T07:50:14Z

TwoFx: Add category: Social interactions

{{comic
| number = 1917
| date = November 17, 2017
| title = How to Make Friends
| image = how_to_make_friends.png
| titletext = No, wait, come back! I want to be friends at you!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic follows an example interaction, purportedly showing how to make friends. We see [[Cueball]]'s strategy for making friends. It does incorporate various points of advice for building friendships, which are completely sound in the abstract. But it's clearly not helping him -- he's out of sync with the interaction context and makes bigger social gaffes by following the abstract advice. Escalating awkwardness ensues.

It starts out with a common way of making friends or interacting with friends, hanging out over a meal. However, Cueball suggests doing so with awkwardly literal phrasing; whereas most people use expressions such as “have lunch” or “grab a bite to eat”, Cueball explicitly invites Hairy to “eat food”. The fact that he feels the need to clarify that they’ll be eating food, as opposed to any other orally consumable items, indicates his lack of confidence to clearly communicate his intentions.

Before Hairy can even respond, Cueball then says that they could instead “sit together and talk without eating.” Although this is indeed another common way to make friends, it’s kind of an odd way to phrase it, especially since he didn’t even give Hairy a chance to reply to his initial suggestion. Cueball then says he doesn’t need to eat (meaning not ''right now'', especially as a prerequisite to talking), but he immediately feels compelled to clarify that he ''does'' need to eat (meaning ''in general''), and again it’s weird that he clarified, as his original wording probably would have been understood. He then awkwardly remarks about how he can eat later if Hairy would rather just talk. The overall implication is that Cueball’s awkwardness and over-explanation would be off-putting to a typical person.

This is apparently a situation that Randall has encountered before, and he apologizes for trying to offer advice.

The title text says Cueball wants to be friends ''at'' Hairy, rather than ''with'' him, which isn’t how friendship usually works. “At” implies that Cueball considers being friends to be a unilateral action that he needs to direct towards Hairy, like “smiling at” or “pointing at”, and does not understand that it is typically a mutual activity of building a relationship, which would be indicated by being friends ''with'' him. “At” can even carry a degree of animosity (compare: [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Chapter_17_2 “he just phoned up to wash his head at us”]).

==Transcript==

:[First panel with words:]
:''Presenting:''

:How to make friends

:[Second panel with Cueball and Hairy facing each other:]
:Cueball: Want to go eat food together?
:Cueball: We could also sit together and talk without eating. I don't need to eat. I mean, I do need to eat. But if you don't want to eat then we can just talk. I can eat later.

:[Third panel with words:]
:''Okay''

:It turns out I still haven't figured out how to do this.

:''Sorry''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]